CMS/CS/EE 144: Networks: Structure & Economics

Description

Social networks, the web, and the internet are essential parts of our lives and we all depend on them every day, but do you really know what makes them work? This course studies the "big" ideas behind our networked lives. Things like, what do networks actually look like (and why do they all look seemingly look so similar)? How do search engines work? Why do memes spread the way they do? How does computational advertising work? For all these questions and more, the course will provide a mixture of both mathematical analysis and hands-on projects.
This course can be combined with a second networks course (CS 142 or CS/EE 143) and a networking project course (CS/EE 141,145, or 147) in order to satisfy the project requirement for CS undergraduate degree, but CS/EE 142 and CS 143 are not required prerequisites. The course assumes students are comfortable with graph theory, probability, and basic programming.